1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an authentication method, an information processing apparatus, and a storage medium, and more particularly, to the ones suitable when used for adding user information to print data.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, a system for managing users that have performed printing in order to manage security or costs has been desired. For realizing these desires, acquiring user name information for identifying users such as login names of users and computer names, when printing is performed, and adding them to the print data, and managing the users using the user name information have been performed.
To describe more specifically, management of users is performed by extracting, for example, user name information in the printing process, or a user name and a password are input via an operation unit of a printer apparatus, and if these coincide with the user name information added to the print data, then printing is executed.
However, if an authentication system using an integrated circuit (IC) card or the like is used therewith, when printing is executed, it is desired to perform print management based on the user name information other than login names or computer names of a system that the printer driver can acquire automatically from a user interface (UI) setting, an operating system (OS), or the like. In order to realize this, it is necessary to extract user name information from information described in the IC card or the like with the printer driver, and to add the user name information to the print data.
However, an information format that is applied to the IC card or the like varies according to authentication systems. For this reason, it is necessary to provide a printer driver for each authentication system, in order to extract user information to be used for identification of a user from user authentication information.
Although only the user name information authenticated by the authentication system should be captured into the printer driver, it is difficult for the printer driver to acquire the authenticated user name information.
As a technique relating to management of users when printing is performed, there is a technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-207661. In the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-207661, first, “user name”, “group name” and “password” are set for a printer driver UI by an operation of a user, and these pieces of information are transmitted to the printer apparatus together with the print data. Then, if the information transmitted together with the print data coincides with information registered on the printer apparatus, printing is executed.
However, like the technique discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-207661, with a method in which a user inputs user name information into the printer driver UI, it may be possible to set up information that has not been authenticated by the authentication system.
Further, it is also possible to acquire a login name and a computer name of a user from an OS to use them as user name information, but the user name information to be authenticated by the authentication system such as the IC card or the like does not necessarily coincide with the login name and the computer name acquired from the OS.
Therefore, it is necessary to build a printing system in which, without changing a printer driver, the printer driver can acquire user name information from among user authentication information relating to users authenticated by the authentication system, and can add the user name information to the print data.